edge of a cliff. richard was said to be only centimeters from death after he attempted this stunt. one witness said everyone was certain he had died but he managed to open his parachute just seconds before smashing into the ground. wow! i'm don lemon. see you back here in an hour. you're in "the situation room" the gloves came off. there was plenty of passion. now the plesh is building on president obama. the romney interview, he talks about his tax plan, his 47 comment and what he would do about iran's nuclear program. and paul ryan pumps iron. jeannie moos takes a look at

those controversial workout photos. i'm wolf blitzer and you're in "the situation room." >> we begin with a dramatically changed political landscape as we head into tuesday's second debate between president obama and governor romney. poll after poll shows momentum building behind the romney/ryan tukt and there's pressure on the president now t wrap up his game for the three-week sprint to election day. let's bring in our correspondent, we're getting reaction to the vice presidential debate, more comments coming in. but the president has his mission cut out for him right now. dan? >> he really does. we just have to look back to right after the debate where the president turned up his volume,

strongly aggressively going after his gop opponents. but what we saw this week at the university of miami on thursday at a big rally there was the president even turning up the volume a bit more. attacking mitt romney for what the president says was his changing position on a whole host of issues, including taxes. take a listen. >> he's trying to go through an extreme makeover. after running for more than a year in which he called himself severely conservative, mitt romney is trying to convince you that he was severely kidding. >> i was talking to a senior campaign official about the tone of the president's rally and this official telling me it's like the president with his back against the wall, the president showing that, quote, i'm going to win this. now, we saw at the vice presidential debate, the vice president come out swinging, very forceful. some would say aggressive.

that perhaps is what we'll see from the president as he prepares for his second debate, wolf. we're hearing from advisers that he's studying very hard and will come out with a much more stronger tone than we saw in debate number one. >> he's learned from some of the lessons that he says he was what, too polite during the first debate? >> he did say he was too polite. we tried to push the white house on what it meant, then. was he going to come out and be less polite. they're not giving details about exactly what the strategy will be other than to say we're going to see a much more different president. he will go after the romney that they say showed up, which was not the romney they expected to see. so we expect the president will be very forceful, passionate as they like to call it here at the white house. >> we'll see what mitt romney comes with to this second presidential debate. dan, thanks very much. and let's dig deeper now. i'm joined by gloria borger and

ron bronstein. ron, i'll start with you this time. ryan and biden's best moments and worst moments? >> i thought for biden, the best movement was the first extended riff on the 47% comment that he made early in the debate. he did a better job in that one long sequence of framing, reframing the argument democrats have tried to press against the republican ticket since the spring than obama did in the entire 90 minutes in the debate in denver. that was a very strong moment for him. i think the strongest moment for paul ryan was pretty simple when he said this is not a recovery. this is not what recovery looks like. you deserve better. and you see the contrasting strength of the two sides. biden best moment was framing this as a choice. who is on your side. whose side are you on and ryan's best moment was basically saying referendum. do the past four years justify another four years. >> i also think biden's question when he said who do you trust, because of course that's what

the election is about. who do you trust was particularly on medicare. are you going to trust us or are you going to trust these guys who by the way have never really liked medicare ever since its inception. i think that was talking right to the audience and asking that question was good. i think for ryan, though, sort of a best moment was just saying these guys, it's been too slow. we can do it, and they haven't. and then when he turned to biden and said, do you know what the unemployment rate in scranton is, and biden's hometown and he ghostia, well, it's over 10% now it was 8% something when you guys took office. >> and that way i felt the debate felt what we're heading for the photo finish. biden framed it as a choice, ryan framed it as a referendum. each of those arguments have a lot of appeal to the last sliver

of undecided voters. >> >> i think biden has the most trouble with the questions about libya at the beginning. and fosh ryan, i think that -- i thought the most interesting moment, the highest risk moment was him really underscoring their opposition to abortion in a way i have rarely heard in a republican ticket. the romney campaign will be opposed to abortion except in the cases of rape, increst and the life of the mother. i'm sure there are a lot of democratic strategies how they're going to use that line in advertising aimed at voters. >> i think for ryan the abortion question was difficult. you could see the dial test i believe of women sort of trending down. that is their problem. i also think that biden kind of got him on the stimulus request. >> that was tough, too. >> where, you hate the stimulus program, you say it was

terrible. why did you write me two letters. >> asking you for money? >> yeah. >> let me play a little clip, a mon taj of some of the style we saw in the debate. >> and whether he we -- our adversaries are much willing to test us and our -- >> with you with all due respect that's a bunch of malarky. >> we have these in place. in spite of their opposition. >> oh, god. >> the lower tax rates. >> now you're jack kennedy? >> ronald reagan. >> office live very different styles. >> generational. >> you have a candidate from before the baby boom and a candidate from after the baby boom. ryan struck me like the nba who was so smart that he didn't need the powerpoint because he had mastered all the slides by memory where as biden was the corner bar keep or the opinionated uncle at the thanksgiving table. i thought he didn't go too far.

i thought biden was more on message, more disciplined and very systematic in raising every issue the democrats wanted to hear raise. ryan's spreefus support for social security privatization. there were people who thought biden was a little on the har up offing side. >> i do. he was smiling, there were times when he did cross the line and when he would seem to be dismissive of paul ryan and i think that's a hard line. and particularly when you're in that split screen and i think biden smiled a little too much when he shouldn't have, and just seemed a little dismissive. >> we're going to continue this. i want to look ahead, the lessons learned from this first and only vice presidential debate to the second presidential debate that's coming up tuesday night. don't go too far away. we'll have that also. up next, my interview with mitt romney. i spoke with him and he speaks

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mitt romney joined me this week for an exclusive "situation room" interview. we covered a lot of ground, but this election revolves around one main topic and i asked the republican nominee about that. watch this. let's move to issue number one here in the united states. the economy. the obama campaign flatly says you're lying. lying about the cost of your tax plan, you're proposed tax reforms. so far you haven't released a lot of specifics about eliminating various loopholes or you've said your tax cuts would be revenue neutral you wouldn't add to the deficit.

let's go through how you would do that. specifically home mortgage deductions, charitable mortgage contributions. are you ready to remove those? what's going on? >> well, i've made pretty clear that my prirnls are number one simplify the code. number two, create incentives for small and large businesses to grow. number three, don't reduce the burden on high income taxpayers. and number four, remove the burden somewhat for middle income people. i don't want to raise taxes on any group of americans. those are the principles. at the same time how we carry them out would be lowering the tax rate across the board and making up for that, both with additional growth and with putting a limit on deductions and exemptions, particularly for people at the high end. those are principles which form the bases of what i would do with our tax proposal. what i want to do is to make it simpler, fairer. i want to encourage the economy to grow again. it's pretty clear that the economy is not growing at the rate it should under the

president. and i can tell you with regards to the deductions you describe, home mortgage, interest deduction and charitable contributions, there will of course continue to be preferences for those type of competences. >> even wealthy people? would you put a cap how much they could deduct as far at charitable contributions are kevernd? i've heard you mention the $17,000 cap for some motion out there and i'd like you to elaborate if you don't mind. >> well, i'm not going to layout a piece of legislation here because i intend to work together with republicans and democrats in congress, but there are a number of ways one could approach this. one would be to have a total cap number. it could be $25,000, $50,000. and people could put whatever deduction in that total cap they'd like. or instead you could take the posture that bowles-simpson did which is going after that specific deduction and limitling them in numbers of ways. lowering rates for middle income people, making sure high income

people don't pay a smaller share and simplifying the code and then encouraging growth. so as to how we approach the various deduction limits and what io know is, we're going to have to reduce the deductions pretty substantially for people at the high end. because i don't want to make the code let progressive. i want high income people to continue to pay the same share they do today. >> so they will pay exactly the same even though you're going to lower the income tax rates for people making let's say more than $250,000 a year, but you're going to eliminate some looph e loopholes, deductions, exemptions, tax credits? >> that's right. i'll bring the rate down across the board but limit deductions or credits and exemptions and so forth, particularly for people at the high end. because have you to do that to make sure that distributionly we continue to have the high income people still pay the same share, the high share they pay today. >> would that add up to the 4.8

or $5 trillion that's been estimated your exree hencive tax would cost. >> it's obviously inaccurate and wrong because what he says is let's look at all the rates you're lowering and he ignores the fact when i say we're also going to limit deductions, credits and exemptions. he ignores that part. obviously that was corrected by his deputy campaign manager who stipulated that in fact the $5 trillion number was wrong. it's completely wrong. the combination of limiting deductions and credits and exemptions, as well as growth of our economy, will make up for the reduction in rate. the reason for lowering the rate, by the way, let's make it very clear. the reason for lowering the rate, both for individuals, as well as for corporations, and the president's plan also lowers the rate for corporations. the reason for doing so is to make sure that america is a more attractive place for small business and for large business

to invest and to add jobs. this is about economic growth. this is about getting more jobs. we're not seeing the kind of job creation america ought to see following a recession. and we're not going to see that growth unless we have a tax policy which encourages businesses, small and large, to make investments and to hire people. that's why i want to put in place the plan i've described. it's been scored by people at rice university as creating 7 million new jobs. the president's plan cuts 700,000 jobs. >> that 47% comment that you've made has caused you a lot of grief as you know. there's been a change in your position over these past few weeks. it went from when you initially saying once that tach came out, you weren't exactly elegantly stating your position. later you said you were completely wrong. i'm curious, governor, how did that evolution in your thinking go on from the initial reaction once that tape came out to what you said the other day that you

were completely wrong? >> well, what i'm saying is that words were that came out were not what i meant. and what i mean i think people understand, is that if i'm president, i'll be president of 100% of the people. my whole campaign is about helping the middle class have rising incomes and more jobs. and helping get people out of poverty into the middle class. that's what this whole campaign is about. the wealthy are doing fine right now. and they'll do fine most likely regardless of who's elected president. it's the middle class that's having a hard time under president obama and my campaign is about 100% of the american people. and so that's, that describes why what was stated in the tape was not referring to what kind of president i would be or who i would be fighting for. instead it was talking about politics and it just didn't come out the way i meant it. >> if you had a do-over governor and you mention 47%, what should you have said about that 47%?

>> well, wolf as you know, i was talking about how do you get to 50.1% of the vote. i'd like to get 100% of the vote but i figure that's not going to happen so i was trying to tell contributors how i get to 50.1%. it's always a per lus course for a candidate to start talking about the mathematics of an election. my campaign is talking about how to get 100% of the americans to have a more bright and prosperous future. >> a question on big bird. was that a mistake to bring it up in the debate? >> you know, i think i've been watching this last several days and you know, a lot of americans are really hurting. we've got 223 million americans out of work or struggling to get a full-time job. and we've got one out of six americans now in poverty, 47 million on food stamps and the president is spending his time talking about saving big bird.

i'll spend my time talking about saving jobs, creating jobs, helping people get back on their feet, getting rising incomes again. so i think people understand that we can't keep on spending like there's no tomorrow. we can't keep on borrowing and spending massively more than we take in every year. and big bird is going to be just fine. "sesame street" is a very successful enterprise. i don't believe cnn gets government funding but somehow you all stay on the air and i just think that pbs will be able to make it on its own just like every one of the other station and does not require us to go to china to borrow money to keep pbs on the air. >> so how much more specific will mitt romney need to get over the next two presidential debates? when it comes to his economic plan. our political panel is standing by with answers. you're in "the situation room."

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back now with gloria borger and ron bronstein. you just heard mitt romney everything i sense move towards the center when it comes to tax cuts. >> he has tried to frame this as something that's going to be revenue neutral and distributionally neutral. it's a very different tone and emphasis during the debate. on the day they announced it they said they were going to do those two things. they were not going to increase the deficit and reduce the people at the top of the the problem is they continue to face the mathematical challenges. >> do the numbers add up?

>> they do not add up on a static basis. >> do you mean that if the economy explodes instead of 1% growth it's 4 sprs or 5% growth. >> the core question if you take all the tax credits that are available to people at the top and you eliminate all of them, it does not equal the cost of cutting their tax rates by 20%. as mitt romney wants to do. that's the conclusion of the tax policy center. so you need the growth. or the argument is otherwise you have to reach down further and eliminate ducks for people in the upper middle class. >> that's the big question. because president obama fas that question. the romn faces that question, which is, if you say you want to reform the tax code, what cherished deductions are you going to eliminate or reduce. and every time the president has walked up to that, talking about eliminating or reducing charitable deductions, talking

about eliminating some kind of mortgage deductions, it doesn't go anywhere in congress, because they wanted to get re-elected. >> in fairness, both obama in romney are talking about alternative ways of doing this. eliminating the deductions that an individual can take. >> romney told me $25,000 -- >> and the president has proposed to reduce the rate at which you can item yieds it. >> but romney started out at 17,000 and then to you he start of raised the cap a little bit. >> and chuck shumer threw a ball into this. we have a trillion deficit. why are we reducing tax rates at all. let's use it to our deficit reduction rather than lowering rates at the top. >> you know this as i did. when biden kept talking about raising taxes for people making a million or more as opposed to $250,000. >> that's a chuck schumer idea as well coming from new york.

>> but all this should tell us is that before people go to the voting boothss, they're not going to know the answers to these questions. everyone would like to know the answers to these questions, but you have professional groups disagreeing about the economic impact of these things. so we don't really know. >> we have more clarity on the spending side where romney has said he wants to limit federal spending which would mean significant reductions in what the federal government does on a whole variety of fronts. even romney has said $500 billion a year in cuts by 2016. so that is a major difference that's out there. >> that's easier said than done as we know from covering congress for many years. >> and big bird is obviously part of that reduction. >> he's a little feather in that reduction. >> tiny. >> the part that this next presidential debate is a town hall style meeting as opposed to three people sitting around a

table, what kind of added pressure does that put on these two candidates? >> well, i think you would have to say that president obama is pretty good at town halls. he's good at speaking before these groups. we've seen mitt romney, you covered him, i covered him during the primaries when he did a bunch of town halls. he kind of warms up, but it's not his natural habitat. because he self edits so much. i think you would have to say that the natural advantage goes to president obama. but obama is also on the spot here. because he did so badly. >> the challenge of the president, it's hard to deliver a concentrated message, especially a negative message, in a town hall. the his challenge here is to do what biden did. reserve ace the case they have so laboriously built against the republicans. all of that kind of dissipated in that first debate where

romney was able to above all say look, i'm a reasonable guy and i'm looking out for the middle class. obama's top priority has to be to put him back in the box that they have spent months building and that's not easy to do at a town hall where you have to respond to people and you have the risk of if you seem overly negative there will be iters in the crowd. it's not the best place for what he needs to do. >> there will be a split screen but if you remember in the laston hall where mccain seemed to be wondering and it bake a "saturday night live" skit. >> i remember when he walked into bush's space over there. >> the one thinghat biden did not do, what is the second term going to be? is there was nothing on that first debate from the president. there was much from the vice president last night. that's still the big hole in the doughnut in these re-election

campaign. >> mitt romney tells us how he would handle some dangerous situations in the middle east. up next, the talks about syria's civil war, iran's nuclear program. my interview with the republican presidential nominee continues right after this. ♪ ♪ ♪

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more now from my interview with republican presidential nominee mitt romney. i asked him about the very

dangerous didn'tments taking place in the middle east right now. >> in syria you said you would identify members of the opposition and ensure they obtain arms to defeat al assad's tanks. how do you make sure those weapons don't get into the hands of terrorists or al qaeda? >> well, wolf, this is part of making sure that we're shaping events, as opposed to just being at the mersy of events. it means that we would have intelligence resources. we would also be working with our friends in the region, particularly the saudis as well as the turks that are closely involved in syria. we work together with them to identify voices within syria that are reasonable voices, that are moderate voices, that's not al qaeda. perhaps provide them with funding, some other supports would include as you indicate weapons so they'll be able to defend themselves. they could come from the turks or the saudis, but the key thing

is not to just sit back and hope things work out well but to recognize iran as playing a major role in syria, and we, through our friends in the region, must also be playing a role to help shape what's happening there and make sure that we rid ourselves of mr. assad and don't have in his place chaos or some kind of organization which is as bad as he is or even worse take his place. >> speakg of iran, the israeli prime minister drew a red line as far as its nuclear program is concerned. here is the question. is there any daylight between you and the prime minister? >> there's no daylight between the united states and israel. we have coincident interests. we share values and we're both absolutely committed to prevent iran from having a nuclear weapon. my own test is that iran should not have the capability of

producing a nuclear weapon. i think that's the same test that benjamin netanyahu who also aplay. i can't speak for the president in this regard, i think there has to be boundaries that the iranians should not cross. let's also recognize we have a long way to go before military action may be necessary. hopefully it's never necessary. hopefully through extremely tight sanctions as well as diplomatic action we can prevent iran from taking a course which would lead to them crossing that line. >> does prime minister netanyahu spoke of the spring or summer as some sort of deadline if israel were to launch a military strike against iran's nuclear facilities and you were president of the united states, would you back up israel? >> we have israel's back both at the u.n. but also mill tearily. i would anticipate that if i'm president, the actions of israel would not come as a surprise to

me. but i would meet with prime minister netanyahu. i would speak with him, i've indicated that my first trip as president would be to israel. so what would happen there would not be something that would be a shock to me. but i can tell you this. that the crippling sanctions do have an impact. they're having an impact on iran's economy right now. they will have an impact on the public there in iran. and there's great hope and real prospects for dissuading iran from taking a path that leads into a nuclear setting. but this going to require real strength on the part of america, and it's also going to require us showing no delate between ourselves and israel. we're going to have to have iran realize they can't play one off against the other but we're both absolutely committed to a world which does not include a nuclear capable iran. >> more on my interview with mitt romney coming up. just ahead, we also talk about whether he was surprised by

president obama's poor performance at that first presidential debate. you're going to want to see how he responds.

this week's fiery vice presidential debate sets the stage for round two between president obama and governor romney but it's round one that still has a lot of people talking and could give mitt romney an advantage tuesday night. everyone now agrees at least, i think almostveryone agrees that your debate performance in denver last week was very strong. the president's performance was weak. here's a question that i'm curious about, because you prepared obviously a lot. senator rob portman, was he a tougher debatetor in those practice sessions than president obama turned out to be?

>> senator portman is very effective. the i think president obama and i both had a good chance to describe our respective views as to how we would do a better job. and i frankly think i benefitted from the fact that rather than having people learn about me by ads prepared by my opposition, they got to actually hear what i would do for myself. and i think that helped me. i think the president also got to layout his plans and people were able to make a comparison. as for rob portman, he's a pretty effective guy. >> were you surprised by the president's performance? >> i actually thought he described pretty appropriately and pretty effectively his policies. i just happen to disagree with those policies. when we talked about the economy, he really is not proposing anything he hasn't talked about for the last four years, which is another stimulus, hiring more government workers, picking winners and losers in industries that he

favors, raising taxes. these are ideas he's had for some time, and frankly we've tested those ideas over the last four years and they have not led to the kind of job growth americans want. but, you know, i think the challenge that he has is that his ideas are just not demonstrating the kind of results he would hope for and people recognize that. >> i've got one final question and i know you've got to go, governor. your wife, ann romney. she had a moving story she told our own gloer wra borger recently about your ritual as you go into a debate. let me play this clip for you because i want to see your reaction and i want to get your reaction on the other side. >> you know, it's a cute thing that he does. almost after every answer he finds me in the audience. he takes off his watch and puts it on the podium and then i writes "dad" on a piece of paper. and that's amazing, because he

loves his dad, respects his dad. doesn't want to do anything that would not make his father proud. >> all of us who have lost a father can relate. but give us a little addition. what do you think about that? >> well, you know, every debate, she's right. i write my dad's name at the top of a piece of paper to remind myself of all that he sacrificed to give me the opportunities i now have. i think about his passion, his passion for the country. dad was devoted to ideals that motivated him. i mean, the guy was born in mexico with nothing when he came to this country, rose to be head of a car company, a governor. i mean, my dad was the real deal and his life and his memory inspires me. so i write his name there and of course i look at ann every chance i get. she's usually looking down.

she's nervous during the debates but i look to her to see if she feels like i've done a good job. >> governor we appreciate you taking the time to joins here in in "the situation room". >> thanks wolf. good to be with you. >> candy crowley is going to be moderating the second presidential debate coming up tuesday night. up next, you'll find out what she'll be looking for during this presidential debate and how her debate will be different from the others. how did i get here? dumb luck? or good decisions?

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>> governor romney's central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut on top of the extension of the bush tax cuts so that's another trillion. and another 2 trillion that the military hasn't asked for. that's $8 trillion, how we pay for that, reduce the deficit and make the investments that we need to make without dumping those costs on the middle class americans i think is one of the central questions of this campaign. >> first of all, i don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. i don't have a tax cut of the scale that you're talking about. my view is we've we've got to provide tax relief to the people in the middle class. high income people are doing just fine in this economy. they'll do fine whether you're president or i am. the people who are having a hard time right now are middle income americans. under the president's policies, middle income americans have been buried. they're being crushed.

middle income americans have seen their income come down by $4,300. this is a tax in and of itself. i'll call it the economy tax. >> candy crowley had a unique perspective as she watched the encounters between mitt romney and barack obama as well modera presidential debate tuesday night. we spoke about what she's looking for and how her debate is different from all the others. and i cited some earlier town hall format debates. >> the candidates will be asked questions by these voters on a topic of their choosing. >> how can you honestly find a cure for the economic problems of the common people if you have no experience in what's ailing them. >> i don't think it's fair to say you haven't had cancer, you don't know what it's like. >> in my state, there's a good

chance i'll know them by their names. >> my question is concerning -- >> i think wisdom comes from age, experience, and intelligence. and if you have some of each and i have some age, some experience, some intelligence. that adds up to wisdom. >> i can only tell you that i don't think senator dole is too old to be esident. it's the age of his ideas that i question. >> my hero is a guy named teddy roosevelt. teddy roosevelt used to say walk softly -- talk softly, but carry a big stick. senator obama likes to talk loudly. >> senator mccain, this is the guy who sang, bomb, bomb, bomb iran. who called for the annihilation of north korea. >> all right. it's a delicate line you've got to -- these candidates will have to walk next week with a live studio audience right near them. >> sure. it just changes the vibe

completely. because you know and i know that they don't have any problem kind of challenging you, challenging a reporter, somebody that they're familiar with, you know. they can be really tough on you and say, hey, that's not true. they don't have a problem shouting you down. when you have a bunch of undecidevoters watching you, first of all, you can't be too hot, can't be too aggressive. that vibe is bad in the room. second of all, there's all the theatrics of it for them, which is kind of the, you have to talk to them and seem you're relating to them. i think it adds a whole other level of performance, if you will, to what they're saying. and it's also very hard to evade a question that comes from a town hall person. and the nice thing will be if the town hall person asks apples and they answer oranges, ego, wait a second, the question was about apples, let's talk about that. there's opportunity for follow-up to get them to drill down on the subject if these

folks want to learn about them in the town hall. >> and you've got to remember that name and address that person directly, one of the techniques. i'm sure they're practicing already. >> as we speak. thanks, candy, we'll see you before next week, as well. you've got state of the union this sunday. >> and remember, our coverage of the second presidential debate begins tuesday night, 7:00 p.m. eastern only here on cnn. paul ryan flexed his political muscles in more ways than one this week. not without some controversy. up next, the workout photos that the congressman wasn't very happy that were being released. ♪

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in switzerland, a crowd observes a jet pass overhead at an air show. in nepal, a vendor waits for customers in a town square. in france, a grape harvester inspects his crop. and in germany, look at this, an

sits in the outdoor enclouds your at a zoo. pictures coming in from around the world. paul ryan spent part of the day of the debate doing something that's always part of his routine. working out. we know he's an avid follower of the p90-x exercise plan, but new photos from "time" magine show us his workout like never before. and here's cnn's jeannie moos. >> reporter: does this picture say mr. vice president to you? >> this is paul ryan, the republican -- >> oh. >> is that him? >> no, see that's worse. that's like, oh, no. >> reporter: oh, yes. and the photos of paul ryan working out that came out in "time" magazine have plenty of fans tweeting too. and just like that, panties drop and the internet melts. >> looks fine. >> knees are boney. >> reporter: big bird called, he

wants his legs back. paul ryan is the bro-est bro ever to run for vp. paul ryan is dechbl channeling his inner marky mark. just as marky mark pumped iron. so did paul ryan at a photo shoot almost a year ago when the fitness buff congressman was a runner up for "times'" person of the year. some say the editors of "time" wished to make him look trivial, young, and unserious. maybe it's the backwards baseball cap, but when we took the photos out to the street. >> have no clue who that is. >> not at all. >> i have to say no. >> reporter: 2/3 of those we asked didn't recognize him. >> that's mr. shuster, matthew morrison. >> no. >> a little like bradley cooper. >> jeff somebody?

>> new sitcom? >> no, not jeff probst. >> i think that's the vice president soon to be. >> reporter: the v.p. candidate spokesman said this about the photos. paul ryan takes his health seriously. clearly, judging by these silly pictures he doesn't take himself too seriously. neher did readers on buzz feed. they put him in with the village people with the cast of "jersey shore," they made him flex and even wink like a certain previous v.p. candidate. some wondered when are the joe biden workout photos coming? the best we could do is drag out that famous photo shop job done by the shirtless joe biden washing his transam, shirtless joe, meet backwards cap ryan. >> jeannie moos, cnn --